Democracy Was Fun is an exhibition that addresses the myriad contexts of democracy and the public discourse. This realm consists of diverse circuits where discourse is articulated including, for instance, the media, the community, "the town hall," as well as the streets. Democracy Was Fun investigates forms of public engagement that rub against accepted conventions as to what is or what is not democracy. For example, in El Perro's video that tropes TV sports advertisement a young woman in a designer jogging suit lights a Molotov cocktail and throws it. Before it reaches its intended target, the frame freezes and a text appears that states "what is important is participation." Participation, which is the bedrock of democracy, is contextualized in this work in ways that interrogate the limits of democratic discourse. Some artists take a different approach in appropriating the media in order to highlight the undemocratic and ideological nature of what is purportedly a neutral avenue of information dissemination, while others investigate democracy and the socio-psychological mechanisms that are deployed to work against it: the cult of personality, the oedipal link between leaders and their followers, as well as what the philosopher Theodor Adorno called the "Authoritarian Personality." Democracy Was Fun explores the culture of complacency and the complacency of culture that fosters blind allegiance and an uncritical spirit; and sees these elements of the American social fabric as norms that foreclose democracy by cultivating the antithesis of the democratic ethos.Democracy Was Fun at White Box NYC

Opened 2004-11-19 Closed 2004-12-11

ID#- 222, Large Tora Bora w/ Little Flower, 94 x 155 cm

ID#- 1033, Consigned to DEMOCRACY WAS FUN or is this a bad ID?, 59 x 87 cm